


bury the dead where they’re found

by sparkywritesficss



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014), The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Short One Shot, just... lego angst., sort of based off of a sufjan stevens song in that i was thinking about it while i was writing this, spoilers for lego movie 2!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 04:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17860334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkywritesficss/pseuds/sparkywritesficss
Summary: Do I care if I despise this, nothing else matters, I knowIn a veil of great disguises, how do I live with your ghost?quick drabble about how emmet copes knowing that he couldn't save himself, in a way.





	bury the dead where they’re found

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh yeah this is unedited and mostly off the top of my head but [vitruvius voice] here we go  
> i have a lot of feefees about rex dangervest

He doesn’t know how, but the vest stays, sitting pretty on top of a pile of multicolored rocks in Dryar.

 

Of all the souvenirs he could’ve taken from his journey - a space rock, one of Batman’s wedding invitations - it had to be the vest, somehow still a part of this realm even in the absence of its owner. And he took the darned thing, of course. Who else was going to?

 

Emmet tries not to think about Rex. Emmet tries, instead, to focus on rebuilding his city and assuming some kind of leadership position to mitigate the chaos. Day to day life proves to be more difficult than he first would have expected. Lots more citizens have shown up since Ourmommageddon, each trying to stake their own claim. They all need help. There’s delegations and committees and very long, boring meetings that leave him exhausted beyond belief by the time he sits down on the double decker couch next to Lucy. He busies himself with her too, doting on her wishes as well as the wishes of his greater circle of friends. It’s a lovelier kind of busy, the kind that scratches across greeting cards and bubbles up in cups of cider at parties. He likes it much more than the other kind.

 

Despite all of these things, Rex still comes to him in dreams, still nags at him early in the morning when he passes by the closet that contains the vest. The construction worker doesn’t know why the thought of someone who tried to kill him and his friends makes his chest tense up with emotion. He knows Rex was cruel, and he knows that _Rex doesn’t even exist anymore._ Events proceeded so that their timelines were cleaved. He knows that. He watched it happen.

 

And yet.

 

Closet door, 3 am. Emmet’s house is quiet, his special best friend and fellow tenant fast asleep. In the distance, the city sleeps too, peaceful with the chirp of crickets and the blowing of wind. He opens the door with a squeak, careful not to disturb the calm. A blade of light clicks through the darkness, casting shadowy guidance onto the vest in front of him. And though Emmet knows that whatever magic is keeping the vest here won’t be going anytime soon, he still handles it with the utmost care. As if he was guiding a wounded butterfly to a window, gently setting it down on the table in front of him and smoothing out the wrinkles. The fabric is smooth, yet worn. A potent energy seems to surround it like a cocoon, one that Emmet can feel when goosebumps shoot up his arm as he touches the caution tape stripes on the front.

 

The only way he could possibly explain it is this: for a brief moment of time, he believed that there was someone out there who really, truly got him. Who made him better, cheered him on. But while he knows that person isn’t there anymore, never was there, he still craves it, somehow. Still mourns the loss of a friend that made him see things in a new perspective. Maybe part of it has to do with the loss of that part of himself, too. “The Special” will never be rough and tumble, or quick-witted, or even grasp a smidge of the swagger that exuded from Rex’s presence. While he’s more glad he isn’t, yknow, _evil_ , he still wishes he would have kept some of that.

 

He still wishes that there was someone in the vest in front of him, smiling that stupid cocky smile and ironically finger-gunning at him.

 

Emmet feels guilty, too. He wishes he could’ve saved Rex, somehow, so that he would have the chance to cut his own path. There’s a million “ifs” that spring up when he thinks of it. The hads and hadn’ts that roil beneath.

 

_If I had just… If I could’ve… If I went… If I said…_

 

Tears spring from Emmet’s eyes as they always do. Rough palms come up to them so he can wipe away the evidence and chip at the grief; the loss. Damming the ebb and flow so one day its stream can be contained in his hands. It still overflows, though. Not enough time has passed for Rex’s memory to be held lightly for Emmet.

 

Sometimes, when he crawls back into bed afterward, he entertains the longing for the memory of his time-travelling self to be gone completely. Clenches his eyes shut, buries his Vest Friend into the deeper levels of his psyche.

 

_Back to the futuring it_ , or at least, attempting to.

 

But to scrub himself of that part completely would be like pretending it never happened at all. And Emmet doesn’t want to pretend like it never happened. Even if Rex is physically gone, he should still stay in Emmet’s memories for safe keeping. To serve as a reminder of sorts, but not just in the cautionary sense. In the sense that even if his doppleganger is gone, he can still look at the good moments with fondness. There’s power in the knowledge that he’s never truly alone - that somewhere in the deep recesses of the universe, Rex is out there, amongst the stars.

 

Emmet swears sometimes that if he says hello to the planets above, he can hear it back in the distance. Like Rex is still out there, watching over him, waving.


End file.
